Stirring up Feelings

If you are familiar with this blog, you know I have posted several times about the miscarriage I had over two years ago, and that I am also a supporter of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month in October. With two years having passed, I thought I had conquered the negative emotions which I experienced when I first had the miscarriage. I have no such luck. 😦

This past weekend was my birthday, and my husband and sons always do their best to make sure I have a special day. And I did. From helping with the Santa Pancake Breakfast at our church in the morning to going to an author signing in the afternoon to going to dinner and having my party that night, all of my day was very special.

At least it was until the end. I received a call from family members wanting to wish me a happy birthday. I didn’t hear the phone ring the first time so I called them back. At the end of the conversation, I was told a piece of news that bowled me over. My sister-in-law was pregnant. I wasn’t expecting to hear that they were going to have any more children so this has brought out a lot of feelings I’m not proud of, the primary one of which is jealousy. It made no sense. I thought I had gotten to the point where I could support others through their losses, but not experience the knife to the heart which I experienced in the first months after my miscarriage when I saw babies in my daily life. If my baby had lived, she (I’m pretty sure it was a girl although it was an early loss.) would be a toddler now–running around and getting into her brothers’ stuff. Like I’ve said before, I would have been an older, but hopefully wiser mother.

It wasn’t to be though. So, how do I get through these feelings? Since the miscarriage, I’ve come back to faith so my first idea was to pray about it. I’ve been talking to God and asking Him to bring me to a point where I’m not jealous and where I can actually be happy for my sister-in-law. Has it happened yet? No. I’ve also tried to forget about it and focus on other things. Has that worked? Nope, that doesn’t work either. And after I went through all of my other ideas, I came back to prayer. The first words I heard at the back of my mind were: “Acknowledge your feelings.” I asked God what that meant. Wasn’t I supposed to get rid of negative emotions so I could serve Him better? He explained that emotions could be negative as well as positive and that I needed to acknowledge the negative ones before I could pray for the positive ones. With that being said, I am admitting it here. I am jealous that my sister-in-law is having a baby, and I wasn’t able to. Has admitting it helped? Not yet, but I will continue to work on that emotion and the others which were stirred up by that phone call.